Requiem for a Bic?
A catch-up follow-up to “Advice to My Past Self on Dating” here! This time, the subject is a little more modern. As I’ve eased out of college ways of thinking and into a “real job” in the “real world,” I’ve discovered the obstacles to creative discipline and inspiration aren’t just social media FOMO and videogames–there’s also wondering whether you’re wasting time that could be better spent benefiting others.
Increasingly, as I try to downsize in life and strip away distractions, I’ve been forced to confront that my biggest writer’s block is a fear that the whole endeavor is a waste of time. Why am I trying to write this story, I’ve found myself fretting–consciously or not–when I could be at the office catching up on that one project I’m behind on, or doing research to get better at my job and help more customers? Eventually, that stress compounds with building frustration about social anxiety and professional shortcomings and… well, let’s just say my brain is not a pleasant place to be most weeknights. One evening in particular, I was so frustrated with that feeling that I decided to sic it on itself, and pounded out 90% of this stream-of-consciousness in an underused notebook with a fitting (if not apocryphal) quote from another “White” author on the cover.
This is not who I am all of the time, but it’s who I am enough of the time that I wrote this. So forgive me, but I just had to spent an hour or two jotting down…
This Selfish Ink
This selfish ink, these words I pen,
could help another live again;
could pass a bill or write a check;
could lend a loan—one would expect
that with the prose which I can blend,
that every letter which I spend
should go instead to someone’s cause
far better than to simply pause
before a notebook every day
and while all my youth away
in tales and logs and verses long,
a horror short or sorry song.
So many need this language more
than stories shelved behind my door:
a tenant on the streets for rent;
a fraudster who should now repent;
a client of an errant smith;
I can’t help but compare, and if
this passion and my line of work
could spar, then with a nervous jerk
the former fades into a buzz
and latter stands, and that’s because
if I have hours just to dream,
when nothing’s real or as it seems,
then those are hours that I need
to prove that I can still succeed
in what I do to earn the nights
when I can dim the city lights
and act like someone gives a damn
for what I do and who I am—
but I can’t breathe inside my head
if doubt just bloats it out instead,
and all I have between my ears
are deadlines, doubt, and flushing fears.
This selfish ink, these words I pen,
could be the marks that do me in.
Yet I would rather rot by scars
dug deep in blackened ballpoint mars
than sore of back and burnt of brain
on every nine-to-five the same.
I’d rather write nothing at all
than everything upon a wall
that then compiles, mortared brick
into a stiff yet soft and sick
imprisonment of soul and sense.
But I will never be so dense
as to presume that I’m alone
in begging life to throw a bone,
escort me to a state of grace
where I don’t ever have to face
that, as it is, I’m here on earth
just chasing sparks of quiet mirth,
while fire burns my silent nerves
and slowly chars my spring of verve.
This selfish ink will live in rhyme—
that’s all I seem to have the time
to calculate without a care:
a vowel here, a line break there,
relenting to the nursery’s pull
when otherwise my mind is full
of all the guilt that I accrue
when debt of every promise due
comes calling for its common cents,
and so my gross incompetence
is advertised for all to see.
The weight of it is crushing me—
the most that I can do to lift
is grab a page and slowly sift
through figments, puns, and rules of three.
My undertreated ADD
is running dry as an excuse.
I’m praying that I have some use
except to aim my tired eyes
at crisscross T’s and dotted i’s,
or selfish ink’s just all I’ll be
when you come take what’s left of me.
—
Notes&Sketches 